At Flourish and Blotts
by Erised
Summary: Complete. Draco meets Ginny Weasley for the first time and she leaves an impression that he will remember for the rest of his life. Rated for angst.


This is a story I've been working on for a few months and after several revisions I think it holds together quite well. This is a one-shot fic and I have no plans for adding any more. I hope you enjoy this while I figure out what to do with "Captivating". Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Some dialog is taken directly from _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_, the U.S. Edition.J.K. Rowling owns the castle that is Harry Potter. I'm just redecorating one of the rooms.

**At Flourish and Blotts**

It had been a hard summer. Draco had returned for the summer holidays only to discover that being the second in the class meant nothing to his father and beatings were implemented so that he would be less negligent in the future. He had even looked forward to when they had company because that meant that he would not be beaten for the week prior and anything that didn't heal would be covered up with a glamour. His father thought the bruises and cuts were reminders of how much of a failure Draco was. They were.

            They emerged from Borgin & Burkes where his father had found yet another opportunity to remind him how worthless he was. But nothing could spoil this day. It was a day Draco had been waiting for since he had ever heard the word 'Quidditch'.

            He was getting a racing broom.

            True he had other brooms, but none of them had been a racing broom. His mother had always complained that he was going to break his neck falling from one and so he had always been restricted to training brooms, no matter how much he argued. His mother was stern in funny ways. She had to do her make-up a certain way and if anyone interrupted her routine, there would be hell to pay. No one but her could plant anything in the gardens. And he wasn't to be allowed a racing broom until he was 13.

            A bell clanged as they walked into Quality Quidditch Supplies and a salesclerk did a familiar double-take upon their entrance. His father strode up to the counter and a worker who had been shelving books nearby scrambled to greet him, knowing that whenever a Malfoy entered a shop, a large purchase was to be made and for any clerk on commission it was an instant magnet. Draco loved the attention.

            "How may I help you?" the clerk asked, sweating slightly under his father's disdainful glare.

            "I need to buy a racing broom. Of the latest model."

"That would be the Nimbus 2001," said the clerk, ushering them to a display._ The latest model_, Draco thought taking in the long slim black handle that was so easy to distinguish from the previous year's model. Draco preferred this to the model from the previous year which looked much too Gryffindor for his liking.

"I'll take seven."

"Seven?" Draco thought, "But that would mean he was buying them for the entire team." He looked at his father questioningly but his father was busy looking at the clerk (who's eyes were large and round).

"Right," the clerk said nervously, "why don't we head into the office to fill out some paperwork."

Draco had wanted a racing broom for as long as he could remember, a desire that had increased ever since he knew Potter had been allowed one. But seeing his father buying one for him was completely different, now that he knew his father was buying them for the entire Slytherin team. People would doubt Draco's skill, saying he bought his way onto the team: an accurate assumption. Besides, Potter had done the same thing with his fame.

            He turned to admire the broomstick once more, letting his father walk away, and upon looking found a girl standing by the broomstick with an expression of awe and yearning. She was very thin with shockingly bright red hair and clothes too small for her and showing wear. He would have thought her to be a Weasley, if arousal hadn't smashed into him quite as suddenly as it did. There was no way he would be attracted to a Weasley, even if he was a twelve-year-old boy, aroused by anything with breasts and a pretty smile. True she was freckled, and flat-chested but she held herself calmly, her arms wrapped around her belly, restraining. She tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear, which had been pierced twice on the lobe. Through one hole she had a tiny stud and the other a small, silver hoop. Her fingers were thin, long and unadorned, and the nails were bitten extremely short. She extended her hand slowly, almost fearfully towards the broomstick on display. He felt the urge to catch it up in his hands and admire it for hours.

            "Beautiful," he heard her whisper, trailing a finger lightly over the handle. It thought it funny she could put a name on his thoughts so accurately, without knowing. She smiled wistfully and turned, her eyes catching his in doing so. They were so clear and blue it was as if someone had caught up the calm ocean and colored her eyes with it. He thought she paused for a moment before walking swiftly past him, but maybe it was just imagined, brought on by hope. He followed her with his eyes as she walked to the exit of the shop. As she opened the door, she looked back at him, expressionless, making him feel an odd pang of something in his chest.

            "Draco –" his father called, and Draco turned to face his father who had emerged from the office. He refused to show any form of guilt for letting his mind wander. "Head on to Flourish and Blotts, this is taking longer than I expected."

            "Yes, father."

            Dazedly, he walked out of the shop as if there was an invisible fishing line that had hooked into his navel and was pulling him along to the shop. He barely noticed who he passed, only just avoiding collisions with other shoppers. But people recognized his appearance and knew enough to get out of his way, lest they have their name on the Malfoy's blacklist and have their family cursed for all eternity. Luckily, he wasn't sure for whom, Flourish and Blotts was only a few shops away. Unluckily, it was filled with middle-aged women gabbling away about some nonsense or another. As he entered, he saw a sign at the door announcing a booksigning that day with Gilderoy Lockhart, an extremely good-looking author who had published a series of accounts of his travels and self-help books on magic. Draco now understood why his mother hadn't been allowed to come into Diagon Alley with them today.

            Not wanting to seem like he was waiting for Lockhart to appear, Draco made his way to the stairs, gettings shoved 3 times on the way. Peeved, he climbed the stairs quickly to observe the crowd from above and was amused at the woman vying to be in front. _They only like him because he's famous._

            He leaned against the railing, feeling the cool, smooth wood under his fingers. There was no ornamentation carved into the wood, it was simple and elegant, worn with use and revarnish. It was so unlike the gaudy, sharp edges of the railing in the front hall where putting your hand on the railing made you want to snatch it away again and check if you were bleeding. It was like the railing to the staircase in the servant's section of the house, when Malfoys had kept servants to keep up the pretense that they were Muggles, which Draco had discovered to be the perfect sliding banister, a secret that he had told no one about. As he leaned against the railing, he listened to the crowd below him the giggles of excitement rising like steam from the crowd. The noise numbed him, pushing away his dread of returning home and he blinked several times before allowing his eyes to glaze over in a bored manner.

            And there she was, the pretty, red-haired girl from the Quality Quidditch Supplies, standing at the edge of the crowd, in front of where the Daily Prophet camera man stood talking to the writer wearing a big media badge.  She clutched a cauldron nervously in her hands, glancing sideways every once and a while, and Draco almost wondered if it was the same. Yet he couldn't doubt it when his reaction to her was so much the same. A short, plump woman stood next to her, patting hair that was the exact same color as the girl's. She leaned over and said something to the girl, and the girl smiled and shook her head in response. His eyes shifted to the people standing next to her, shifting from red to red to brown to black. Draco clenched his jaw, horrified.

            "Gilderoy Lockhart!"

            She _was_ one of them. One of the brood. A muggle-loving pestilence. How could he think one of _them_ was attractive. How dare he think her pretty. How dare she _be _so pretty. How could he have let her attract him. He was disgusted.

She had obviously enhanced herself with some sort of potion. There was no other possible explanation. And now that he thought about it, her eyes weren't really clear blue, they were dull and boring. And her freckles overwhelmed her features. And her head looked like it was on fire.

"It _can't _be Harry Potter?"

He had nearly missed it, and almost wished he had when he was the scene that played out beneath him. His lip curled in disgust as once again famous Harry Potter was exulted and became more famous. His only relief was that Potter looked distinctly surprised and uncomfortable. It served him right to make a fool out of himself in the public eye. He was finally showing his true colors, as a buffoon.

When Lockhart had finally released Potter from where he had held him in a fatherly clamp, Potter staggered into the crowd and over to where she stood watching with rapture and concern. Draco felt himself run down the stairs without knowing why as he watched Potter tip the books Lockhart had given him into Ginny's cauldron. She staggered slilghtly under the sudden weight and he found himself suddenly right before him without knowing quite how he had gotten there.

"Bet you loved that, didn't you, Potter?" he said, blurting out the first thought that came to mind. "_Famous_ Harry Potter, can't even go into a _bookshop_ without making the front page."

"Leave him alone, he didn't want all that!" Fury lit in her eyes as they locked with her and looking into them, he nearly forgot where he was and what he was doing. It took a moment before her words set in. She was protecting Potter. She was standing up for him and all Draco could think of was how nice it would be if she would stand up for him, not Potter. The thought made him even angrier.

"Potter," he spat, without taking his eyes from her "you've got yourself a _girlfriend_." She reddened and he felt an odd sort of satisfaction that faded as soon as he heard Ron Weasley speak.

"Oh, it's you. Bet you're surprised to see Harry here, eh?" He tore his eyes away from her to face the youngest Weasley boy.

"Not as surprised as I am to see you in a shop, Weasley. I suppose your parents will go hungry for a month to pay for all of those." He eyed the girl's cauldron. He assumed her to be Weasley's sister. He had heard his father say that there was only one Weasley girl. It appeared her parents had kept trying and trying to have a girl and stopped when they did. By the state of her clothes, he doubted that she had anything new. The thought that he might buy her something new crossed his mind, only to be squashed with a severe self-reprimand. _Let Potter be the hero and rescue her from poverty_.

He watched Mr. Weasley approach and felt a hand on his shoulder that was so familiar he didn't even need to look up to know it was his father's.

"Well,well,well – Arthur Weasley," his father said over his shoulder. Mr. Weasley's ears turned slightly pink.

"Lucius."

"Busy time at the Ministry, I hear. All those extra raids…I hope they're paying you overtime?" His father reached into the girl's cauldron and she barely noticed. She was too busy, he noted with surprise, staring at him. He glared back. 

His father and Mr. Weasley kept talking in dangerously brinking voices and before he knew quite what had happened, the girl's cauldron clanged to the ground and he was knocked out of the way by Mr. Weasley. He didn't watch as his father and Mr. Weasley fought, knowing that brawling in public was beneath a Malfoy. But he couldn't bring himself to feel disappointment in his father; he always had his own reasons. Perhaps if he didn't find the girl so pleasing to watch, or if she didn't stare back calmly at him. If she had glared or stared warily but he couldn't comprehend her serenity and the more he stared at her the more her image burned into his mind.

His father thrust a book at the girl and he looked at his father's wild image. His usually impeccably perfect hair flew wildly about his face and there was a bruise forming around one eye that his mother would fuss over later. The girl took the book timidly and let it drop into her cauldron as if the book had burnt her. His father motioned for him to follow and they left the shop, his father looking oddly pleased for someone who had come off worse in a fight.

            "It would be wise to avoid the Weasley girl this year," he said jovially as they made their way to the public fireplaces.

            "Why, father?"

            "Don't question me."

            The next month wasn't much of an improvement. His father didn't leave him alone, his mother wept that her only child was leaving again, and he couldn't get the youngest Weasley out of his mind. He still didn't know her name, being too afraid to ask lest his father suspect his obsession. Draco thought about her, dreamt about her, and nearly lived his life around imagined conversations he would have with her. Every morning and every night that he could he would touch himself as he thought about her and the way she had hugged herself and the way her fingers had stroked the broomstick. She was the first person he could think about all by herself and it was enough to make him come. But as much as he wanted her, he knew he'd never have her. She'd never have him; she was so enamored with Potter. Famous Harry Potter, how could he compete with that?

~~~~~

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